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Just a quick note to let everyone know that the Subscribe RSS now seems to be working fine. (Let me know if you have trouble with that or anything else.) Also, comments are now posting automatically, so there should be no delay in seeing them. Here’s hoping the spammers stay away!

Thanks, all, for your patience with these early days of new-blog life.

[UPDATE: This post was previously titled, “Fatherhood Channel Suppressed This Comment.” I have since heard from someone at the site, and he has posted a comment here, and also posted my comment, with my permission, where I was trying to submit it. I believe him that this was some technical glitch, and I apologize.]

Previously at my Living Single blog at Psychology Today, I wrote about media coverage of marriage and relationship education programs. In short, the enthusiasm of the claims has been barely restrained by the actual results of scientific research. (See here and here and here.)

At first, I was happy to see that the PAIRS Foundation, posting as part of the Fatherhood Channel, wrote about my success at getting NPR to take notice of the exaggerations it had aired. While doing so, though, it continued to perpetuate some of the same myths. It also guessed wrong about my background. They seem to think I offer therapy and that their classes would be a threat to my livelihood. I’m not a therapist or any other sort of clinical psychologist (I’m a research psychologist), so my criticisms of their misleading claims have nothing to do with that.

It’s still selling! I’m talking about that card game, Old Maid, in which EVERYONE wins except the person who is stuck with the Old Maid card. Natalya sent me this gem – thanks, Natalya! As she pointed out, this singlism is being peddled to children.

I say it is time to rewrite the rules of Old Maid. First, and most obviously, whoever ends up with the Old Maid WINS! And, of course, we need a new picture of the single woman.

[UPDATE: The subscribe RSS should now be working and the comments should be posting automatically.]

Thanks, everyone, for all the kind comments you’ve been sending me about this new blog and website! Much appreciated.

There does seem to be one problem so far, with the “Subscribe to my blog, entries RSS” option. It works for some people and not for others. (Even I am in the latter category!) My web wizard will take a look at it late-night tonight, so hopefully it will be fixed by tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience. The option to subscribe to comments seems to be working for everyone.

Apparently, comments are moderated, so I need to approve them before they appear, meaning they won’t show up instantaneously. Not sure if I can set the option to let them appear immediately — I know that opens the site to spammers.

I’ve been writing the Living Single blog at Psychology Today since March of 2008. Entries that were posted earlier tend to have more page views. With that in mind, here are the Top 20 posts about single life from that blog. (I wrote some posts on other topics that would have made this list but I’m not including them here.)